The entanglements and interactions that characterize the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century Mediterranean pose a wealth of problems for historians. Many scholars turn to the slippery terms "cosmopolitanism" and "nationalism" to understand how the populations moving around the sea's shores changed over time. These accounts often portray a struggle between worldviews, one subverting or replacing the other. In this article, I argue that the problem at stake in the historiography of the colonial Mediterranean is rooted not in the epistemological categories we use to understand the period, but rather in our interpretive approach to the processes that contour the sea's history. In place of a focus on such categories, I attend to recent scholarship on histories of the future. By taking seriously the role of temporal imagination among historical actors, this approach can help historians better understand how historical processes unfolded in the colonial Mediterranean. In this case, the Italians of Egypt (italiani d'Egitto) and historical actors connected to their communities envisioned their futures during the interwar period in ways that reach far beyond the immediate political circumstances. Contrary to traditional interpretations, which see the 1950s as pivotal to the departure of Italians from Egypt, in this article I demonstrate that, in part triggered by Fascist propaganda and imperialist aspirations in the sea itself, by the late 1930s departure and repatriation were central to any discourse on Italian futures in Egypt. This case, I argue, challenges the foundations of traditional depictions of the twentieth-century colonial Mediterranean.

中文翻译：

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地中海期货：历史时间和意大利人离开埃及，1919-1937

19 世纪末和 20 世纪初地​​中海的纠缠和相互作用给历史学家带来了很多问题。许多学者求助于“世界主义”和“民族主义”这两个模糊的术语，以了解沿海地区的人口如何随着时间的推移而发生变化。这些描述经常描绘世界观之间的斗争，一种颠覆或取代另一种。在这篇文章中，我认为殖民地中海的历史编纂中的关键问题不在于我们用来理解这个时期的认识论类别，而是在于我们对描绘海洋历史的过程的解释方法。我没有关注这些类别，而是关注最近关于未来历史的奖学金。通过认真对待历史参与者中时间想象的作用，这种方法可以帮助历史学家更好地了解历史进程如何在殖民地中海展开。在这种情况下，埃及的意大利人 (italiani d'Egitto) 和与其社区有关的历史参与者在两次世界大战期间以远远超出当前政治环境的方式设想了他们的未来。与将 1950 年代视为意大利人离开埃及的关键的传统解释相反，我在本文中证明，部分由法西斯宣传和帝国主义对海洋本身的渴望引发，1930 年代后期的离开和遣返是任何关于埃及的意大利期货的讨论。这个案子，我争辩说，